English

We are MOGiS e.V. - a German organisation of victims of sexual child-abuse. MOGiS has been established in April 2009 as "MissbrauchsOpfer Gegen InternetSperren" (which could be translated as: "abuse survivors against internet blocking"). We are opposing the blocking of webpages as a means to tackle the circulation of the images of sexual child abuse on the internet. What we are demanding is international cooperation on the removal of images of sexual child abuse from the internet. One positive example for this kind of cooperation could be the INHOPE network of internet hotlines.

The EU-member-states will obligate their national ISPs to manipulate the name resolution (DNS) for their citizens based on the secret blocking list. To implement this infrastructure the ISPs have to make changes to their core infrastructure (the nameserver). Once the blocking scheme has been implemented it can be used to restrict the access to any website.

So first lets get a few facts straight:

The expression "child pornography" is a gross and misleading oversimplification of what we are actually talking about. Because neither is the child a prostitute (porneia) nor are we talking about an illustration (grapho). What in fact we are talking about is the documentation (pictures/films) of the sexual exploitation of children. So it should be called "abuse imagery", "images of sexual child abuse" or similar. This also sends a signal to consumers of such imagery: they are not consuming porn, but images of the sexual abuse of a child. The availability of that content is furthering the suffering of the affected children.

Having a look that the German police statistics we see that one out of one hundred children that have been sexually abused (mostly by family members or close relatives) is being abused on camera (98 out of ﻿15098 abuse victims in 2008)﻿.

some of these documents of child abuse find their way into the internet (although most of this content is probably being redistributed by snail mail or between mobile phones).

Phase II: Analysis of sites and identify legal elements in the business solution and destroy their possibility of making a profit.

Phase III: Investigating the people that financially benefit from the commercial distribution of child abuse material.

Actually this plan seems somewhat lacking. Because only at phase III we see anyone going after the criminals distributing that stuff. Completely missing from this action plan is "freeing the children from their abusive relationships" which should be step 1. If there actually still is a market (like in "money being paid") for that material this could conveniently be bundled with "catching the criminals by following the money".

To be clear: images that have been removed from the Internet do not have to be blacklisted to be blocked. So instead of blocking the documents of sexual exploitation of children in every one of the 27 member states of the EU it would only have to be removed once by the action of one of the member states. This really cries out for cooperation.

So much about international cooperation on the removal of images of sexual child abuse on the internet. USA and Canada are not what we would usally call a failed state. Interestingly enough Canada is using some blocking technology itself.

Although the Netherlands implemented blocking technology they are always within the top 5 of countries containing blocked sites. What was really disconcerting last year, was the fact that the Netherlands were blocking a website in the Netherlands. This really shows Phase I of CIRCAMP. It's main purpose is just the exchange of blocking list entries. So they did and they just were not acting on the information they got from other COSPOL members.

Another example is Finnland, which is blocking the Finnish security researcherMatti Nikki, who opposed internet blocking in his country by analysing the Swedish/Finnish blocking list and publishing the details of that analysis. The analysis showed that only 37 out of 1047 websites on the leaked blocking list actually contained images of sexual child exploitation. (9 [red] + 28 [orange] from Matti Nikkis analysis)

The implementation of the DNS manipulation has been stopped - some of the changes already have been rolled back. Currently the German parliament is discussing the ﻿abolition of "blocking" in favor of "removing". This actually could be one of the reasons why blocking is now being proposed on a European scale by the Spanish EU-presidency.

As looking away is just what happens in families (or organisations) when a child abuse is being uncovered MOGiS' slogan is:

﻿That is what we have consistently and by now quite successfully been communicating in Germany throughout the last year.

So now it's time to tackle the problem of web-blocking on an international (at least European) level. We have to network and unite against the advancing restriction of civil liberties all over the world.